Tighten the covid screws little by litte, as Juncker advised …

 

Remember M Jean-Claude Juncker? Surely you cannot have forgotten him already! I’m bringing him up because it looks to me as if our covid government has fully understood his quip: “We decide on something, leave it lying around and wait and see what happens. If no one kicks up a fuss, because most people don’t understand what has been decided, we continue step by step until there is no turning back.” This is how government will proceed, given their latest ‘covid edicts’. I’ll look at the below, first there are some more ‘health’ news items which will surely drive another section of the population to drink!

At the top is the shocking revelation that Hancock will take overall control of the NHS. You thought he had control already anyway? Apparently not:

“Matt Hancock will take direct control of the NHS amid concerns that controversial reforms of the David Cameron era have hampered its response to the Covid pandemic. In a bonfire of the coalition Government’s signature health policy, ministers are to regain authority over front line services, scrapping a decade-long drive for internal competition. It follows longstanding frustration by ministers – exacerbated by Covid – that despite being responsible to voters for the performance of the NHS they lack practical power over it.” (paywalled link)

Is this a ‘bonfire of the NHS quangos’? Not really. If you think this cannot but make things ‘better’: no it won’t. It’s going to make things worse:

“Dozens of new management bodies will be given control over billions of pounds of taxpayers’ money. […] NHS chiefs say that changes to allow GPs, hospitals and social care to work together will improve patient care.” (link, paywalled)

How is setting up more ‘new management bodies’, with the power to control our money, going to improve things? It doesn’t take a political genius to recognise immediately that these ‘new management bodies’ will siphon off money for their own admin, from well-paid ‘CEOs’ all the way down – money that should go towards patient care and frontline staff remuneration. Amazingly enough, this ‘plan’ has already been in the works. So it’s not immediately due to the NHS ‘crisis’ evoked by covid:

“While plans for the legislation are understood to have begun before the 2019 election, they have accelerated since the start of the pandemic amid mounting frustration in Number 10 at the way parts of the NHS have responded to the crisis. According to a leaked draft of the health white paper, clinical commissioning groups – which currently “buy” healthcare on behalf of patients – will be replaced by “Integrated Care Systems” that will answer to the Secretary of State.” (paywalled link)

Moreover, it’s not the bad, ‘austeritee Torees’ who’ve been driving what will end as an increase of NHS management ‘groups’, mismanaging everything under another label – this comes from NHS bosses:

“Government sources argue that they are responding to calls from Sir Simon Stevens, the head of NHS England, for changes to make it easier for hospitals, GPs and others to plan care locally, insisting that the revisions are “evolution rather than a big bang”. (link, paywalled)

That immediately fuelled my suspicions: it’s about more power for the same power-hungry health tsars, nothing else. Now savour this next quote, illustrating wonderfully the mindset of the NHS ‘Bosses’: 

“Stevens is said to be relaxed about the change, arguing that ministers’ wishes have always been accommodated and there are few big areas of disagreement.” (link, paywalled)

The NHS is ‘accommodating ministers’ wishes – yeah right! Replace ‘the NHS head’ with any top mandarin of any Whitehall department and look again at that arrogant statement about ‘accommodating the wishes of ministers’. This is what the mandarins have been doing all along: ‘accommodating ministers’ wishes’ – provided these wishes chime with their own. Where they don’t – they don’t! The Brexit negotiations are not yet a distant memory, nor is the ongoing scandal of illegal immigration.

This power grab is in fact about the centralisation of all those ‘local health powers’ because local councils, poor things, simply cannot be expected to do things properly. For example, The Times reports that:

“Powers to put fluoride in water, impose health warnings on sausages and order the NHS to prevent obesity will be handed to the government under plans to be announced within weeks, […] The proposals will also fulfil promises to ban advertising of unhealthy food and give powers to replace voluntary traffic-light food labelling with compulsory health warnings.” (link, paywalled)

On the back of the oh-so successful covid government campaigns, from lockdowns, national muzzle wearing to national mass vaccination, this version of ‘taking back control’ is nothing but a veiled attempt to facilitate the coercion of the nation into ‘healthy living’. It’s easing the way for us to become an ‘NHS Nation’. And here’s the actual reason for this power grab:

“At the heart of the bill will be the scrapping of the clinical commissioning groups, which control £85 billion of spending.” (link, paywalled)

In other words: trust your health ministers to administer this huge sum for your local council – who can now hide their incompetence behind “the Whitehall computer sez no”. Thus we can’t even deselect these local ‘health bosses’ locally, for incompetence!

Here’s the other Junckerian item. It’s about the proposals for a ‘lockdown exit strategy’. You might recall that one of the ‘measures’ instituted by the dictators of the devolved Celtic Fringe was to ban pubs from selling alcohol. Was there an outcry in those nations – or did they quietly accept that this was ‘reasonable’? After all, everybody was able to buy booze in the supermarkets – that was not deemed to be a ‘non-essential’ item. So now this’ll come to England:

“Pubs and restaurants could reopen as soon as April if they agree not to sell alcohol under options being discussed to allow the widespread relaxation of coronavirus restrictions after Easter. [A] temporary “booze ban” is being considered as part of the Government’s roadmap for lifting lockdown, which will be unveiled on Feb 22. It is understood the move is being discussed to allay concerns from Prof Chris Whitty, the chief medical officer, and others about the effect of drinking on social distancing.” (paywalled link)

Yes, dears – it’s about accommodating Whitty’s fears! This worked so well in the devolved nations which provided the trial balloons for this alcohol-ban in pubs: nobody said anything, so now it can be done in England as well. Given the ‘new powers’ health ministers are aiming to grab back, expect more bans: on sausages, on alcohol sales generally, on sugar and chocolates. After all, “we” want to stay healthy to ‘protect the NHS’, don’t “we” – and we’ve shown that we’re fine with accepting ‘covid health’ measures without a whimper.

Meanwhile, with mass vaccinations gathering pace, with the prospect of the over 50s having been jabbed by May – local elections will apparently go ahead in England – and the rest of the adult nation by the end of June, according to government ‘sources’ (link, paywalled), you might have worried just a bit about the economic fate of all those testers & tracers. After all, with everybody ‘immunised’, who will be left to test and trace? Well – tourists and travellers, that’s who! Not only will all travellers now have to stay in covid-quarantine hotels (horse – stable doors – bolted comes to mind), they’ll be tested, not once but two and even three times:

“All travellers will be tested twice for Covid after arrival in the country under Government plans to prevent the spread of new variants. Ministers have already ordered tests on day two and day eight for passengers from the 33 “red list” countries who will be quarantined in Government hotels from February 15. But Matt Hancock, the Health Secretary, will announce next week that the testing will be extended to all arrivals from all other countries, who currently have to quarantine at home. It will mean all passengers will have three Covid tests, the first within 72 hours of departure to enter the country and then two more on the second and eighth day of quarantine.” (paywalled link)

According to that article, PHE will ‘issue’ the tests – either the PCR or the Laminate Flow one – to all arriving travellers. Who’ll be paying for this – we or the travellers – isn’t being said. We’re told though that Police chiefs are refusing to have officers stationed in these quarantine hotels. So the covid dictators have come up with this:

“Government-approved security staff will be deployed to supervise arrivals and patrol inside and outside the hotels, but have no powers to stop anyone leaving. A senior policing source said: “Our role should be purely to deal with absconded travellers, finding and returning them. We’ve been clear we should not be a visible presence at hotels.” (paywalled link)

Well, why would having another lot of ‘government covid quarantine enforces’ matter now? Haven’t “we” got used to ‘muzzle-marshals’ at supermarkets already? Why wouldn’t the rest of the world comply? Won’t they accept that “we” must stomp out any mutant daring to enter this country, regardless of the repercussions for the whole economy? Never mind all that – it’s again a case of SAGE winning over common sense and economic considerations:

“Sage minutes released on Friday showed the scientific advisers said that testing on arrival, during or after quarantine would play a significant role in tackling the spread of Covid variants. […] To support their case, critics [of an ‘open border’ policy, I assume] have cited the Sage minutes which said that only a “complete, pre-emptive closure of borders” would “get close to fully prevent the importation of cases or new variants”.” (paywalled link)

No, don’t even try to reconcile the ‘we can’t close borders’ at the outbreak of the pandemic last year with this latest SAGE warning! Don’t ask why ‘foreign’ mutants must be prevented from entering while chances are that other mutants are evolving right here in the UK. Corona viruses mutate rapidly and often independently, but ‘our mutants’ can clearly be controlled by SAGE – if government follows all the SAGE diktats.

Yes, Juncker was correct: take little steps here and there and when there’s no outcry, the screws can easily be tightened because it’ll be too late then for us plebs to stand up. We’ve already accepted the previous small steps, so why would we cry over another turn of the screw?

Will this covid spiral of depriving us of our liberties ever end?

 

KBO!

 

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